Masters

I was going to call this entry “Finale” -- not to describe my last blog entry, but the title of the last CD piano album I will record, my fourth one over the years.  However, on the good advice of an old friend who warned me never to say “never” (as I had said when I wrote about my penultimate CD, Music Makes Us) I’ve changed the title to Masters.  Also, “Finale” sounds maudlin – and I don’t intend it as such whereas “Masters” is a better description of the composers I showcase in this latest CD. 

Nonetheless, I am fairly certain that this is my last recording as I've now covered most of my favorites as well as the different kinds of music I enjoy playing (although all fall under the “Great American Songbook” rubric). Masters is intended to "fill in" some of the blanks in my Broadway repertoire, having already included thirty four songs that were performed on Broadway in my previous CDs.

The "missing" songs are by the composers I feel dwarf all, George Gershwin (with his lyricist, his brother Ira) Richard Rodgers (with Oscar Hammerstein) and Stephen Sondheim.  Masters addresses that lacuna by including twenty-three other songs by these celebrated Broadway innovators.

In an interview by PBS' Great Performances the daughter of Richard Rodgers, Mary Rodgers, related that "Noël Coward once said that Daddy just 'pissed melody.'” She also revealed that "Gershwin was a close friend. If he was ever jealous of anyone — and I don’t mean 'jealous' in any nasty or competitive way — it was Gershwin."  No wonder, Gershwin wrote in all musical genres, Broadway being just one. (And some of the Gershwin songs in this CD were actually written for Hollywood, but written in the Broadway vein.) Who knows where he might have moved music if he hadn't suddenly died so young.   So there is continuity here -- Gershwin knew Rodgers & Hammerstein, and Hammerstein, the lyricist, was a mentor to Sondheim – who naturally began as one as well, but would go on to become a composer of intricate, urbane songs, as well as writing the lyrics.  George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers always had a lyricist to rely on (although after Hammerstein died, Rodgers wrote his own lyrics for the show No Strings).

I should footnote that the music for the last song in the program, Maria, was written by Leonard Bernstein, although I include it here as Sondheim wrote the lyrics and I think his collaboration with Bernstein helped launch his long-time career. Sondheim is now the senior statesman of Broadway and I can't imagine anyone touching his legacy.

There is another reason I decided to work on this album.  This is the first year I've been without a regular “gig,” normally performing at retirement homes during the season.  My contacts at previous intuitions had changed and my season started with adverse health news. I had other things on my mind. So, instead, I turned more inward, playing these songs and others, writing some fiction.  .

It is restricting, just so much time to play the piano, and having a studio recording session one has a tendency to practice these songs more, to the detriment of other piano music.  I'm looking forward to no such responsibilities in the future (other than my “senior circuit” engagements) so I feel this will be my last such recording.

Masters: 

George and Ira Gershwin

Summertime / I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise / Somebody Loves Me / The Man I Love / Embraceable You / Who Cares? / Love Walked In

           

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein

People Will Say We're in Love / The Carousel Waltz / What's the Use of Wond'Rin' / If I Loved You / You'll Never Walk Alone / Bali Ha'i / Some Enchanted Evening / Hello Young Lovers / We Kiss in a Shadow / The Sound of Music / It Might as Well Be Spring  

Stephen Sondheim

Send in the Clowns / Sorry – Grateful / Being Alive / I Remember / Maria (Music by Leonard Bernstein)

Another New Year. Another Day....

....Another Hour. Another Minute.  Who's counting?

I guess I am, grateful to have made it to 2014, in spite of health impediments which modern medicine has helped me to hurdle thus far.

The best summation of the year we've just left was written by Dave Barry in the Washington Post.  Humor is the idyllic tonic living in an insanely changing world (of course, it's always been changing -- but speed and its almost freakish nature seem to define change nowadays). So here is the link to Barry’s Review of 2013, the Year of the Zombies. 

Between Christmas and New Years some of Ann's family visited, her brother Stan who lives in California, his daughter with her husband and their two children, plus Ann's cousins who live in Florida brought their two daughters and their kids.  In all there were 16 of us for a family get-together brunch, including five children ranging in age from three to 15.  I had prepared for the preteen and teenage kids by cleaning our pool deck, arranging lounge chairs, and our outdoor table.  I even put my hands on my Nerf football thinking, hey, it might be fun for them to toss that around.  I'll even partake -- I can still throw a spiral, although not very far anymore.

But they all arrived with their iPods/iPhones/iPads/tablets/laptops and most of the day they were "plugged" into Wifi, and that was it for them.  No play. Not having grandkids, I guess I've lost touch in what interests that generation.  It certainly is something I did not expect. 

The one child I could relate to was 3 year old Zack as he is too young for an iPhone (are you listening Apple, a lost opportunity?).  I forgot how active a toddler could be so I had fun leading him around by the hand, even getting him up on my boat so he could sit in the captain's chair while I explained some of the instruments (his carefully steering the vessel while it sat on its lift).  Here's a very brief (22 seconds) video of us:

We celebrated the New Year with friends, a festive dinner first, and then we watched PBS' Great Performances concert of Sondheim's brilliant Company with the New York Philharmonic and an all-star cast, including such luminaries as Neil Patrick Harris (as Bobby), Patti LuPone (as Joanne), Stephen Colbert (as Harry), and Jon Cryer (as David).  Luckily I had recorded the performance so we can enjoy it frequently.  While Sondheim went on to more sophisticated musicals latter in his life, this was groundbreaking work in 1970, his conversational music soaring.  And the message of "Being Alive" and having "Company" was perfect for the New Year.

I've been trying to "catch up" with my reading before the New Year and I recently finished two books, both unlikely reads for me, the first recommended by my son, Jonathan, and the second by my friend Emily.  These novels, in an odd way, invite comparison, although they are as different as night and day.

Unfortunately, I read The Fault in Our Stars on an old version of the Kindle, one that used to be Jonathan's and so he lent me the "book" on that device.  It was the first book I have ever read in a manner and it proved to be the frustrating experience I once imagined  -- as I was not able to easily make notes for later review (although I understand that this is now a cinch in later versions of the Kindle) and if I accidentally pushed the wrong button, the screen reverted to the beginning and I had to find my place over again (luckily, the book isn't very long). 

It's classified as a Young Adult novel so I wondered what business I had reading it, but it had a profound effect on me -- as the protagonist is a cancer victim and has trouble breathing, dragging around one of those oxygen canisters, something she simply accepts.  It covers the subject of living one's life and dealing with one's death, not to mention the suffering cancer victims must endure.  I'm probably the last person on earth to hear of its author, John Green, but he is one hell of a writer.  He sort of reminds me of Jonathan Tropper, but with something more profound to say.

Hazel and Augustus (Gus) are two teenage cancer victims, who meet in a cancer support group and fall in love.  It (surprisingly) is not maudlin, and the level of the writing and the philosophical themes examined about the nature of life and death, make this a novel suitable for adult consumption and contemplation.  And it is the kind of novel that just breezes along, almost impossible to put down, the reader forming a real emotional attachment to the main characters. 

Hazel longs to know more about a novel she has read and is mystified by "An Imperial Affliction" written by an author, Peter van Houten, who lives in Amsterdam and has set his story there.  Houten's novel is about a girl dying of cancer and so the implications for Hazel are clear; however the novel has a sudden ending, rather like life itself, without ever revealing what happens to the characters.  This naturally leaves Hazel in a bind, but thanks to the equivalent of a "last wish" foundation, Hazel and Gus are cleared to travel to Amsterdam to actually meet Houten himself and try to discover the true outcome. And as often happens in real life, they are disappointed to learn that Houten is a hopeless alcoholic recluse but it is there where Hazel and Gus consummate their love. 

The writing is exquisite at times, Gus writing about Hazel in a letter: "She walks lightly upon the earth.  Hazel knows the truth:  We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either."

The ending is, as you might imagine, heart-wrenching, but it is surprising, and to go any further here would be to reveal spoilers.  I loved reading this book (which not surprisingly is now being made into a movie).  So, John Green goes onto my never ending radar list of contemporary American writers to watch.

Contrast that to the novel I just finished, Emma Who Saved my Life by Wilton Barnhardt, a coming of age story narrated by the protagonist, Gil Freeman, who leaves his home town in Illinois to become an actor in NYC in the 1970's, moving in with two women who have artistic aspirations themselves.  As he says in retrospect, I can't quite retrieve the young man with all that faith -- where did he get that energy?  Didn't he know the odds against being an actor -- or Emma being a poet, or Lisa being a painter?  How did he have so much faith in the world?  No, it wasn't all stupidity and it wasn't all innocence and youth.  I think New York was there too, egging us on.

Indeed, New York City, is the other major "character" in the novel, and Barnhardt covers all of the city, boroughs included, so for me, it was a nostalgic tour, having lived in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn.  The novel is as much a love song to NYC as it is a story about the characters, and of the times, each chapter representing a year in the life of the characters, starting with 1974 and ending with 1983.  As such it spans the political spectrum from Nixon, to Ford, to Carter, to Reagan, not to mention the changing mores of the times, drugs, sexual liberation, etc.  Reading the novel was like reliving the times and it's hard to believe that this was Barnhardt's first novel.  I think of influences such as Joseph Heller and J. D. Salinger for some of its humor -- and in parts it is a very funny novel.

But while Hazel and Gus consummate their love, Gil's love for Emma (and it is that love which "saves" his life) essentially goes unrequited (you'll have to read the novel to the very end to understand why I qualify the issue).  And while we root for Hazel and Gus, Barnhardt's characters are totally self indulgent and if they ever had to deal with Hazel and Gus' issues, they'd have a hard time.

Although Gil does become an actor and finally makes it to Broadway, he learns that like so many actors he is really mediocre, and he learns it the hard way, first by playing opposite an actress who was once a film star and has come to Broadway, a Rosemary Campbell, to the delight of her adoring fans, Gil knowing that she is a facade of an actress, commenting,

I always wondered if Rosemary knew who the president was, or what year it was, or if World War II was over. Her world had no connection to fact or modern life or normalness or strife and conflict of any kind. One could fantasize about her limo getting hijacked to the South Bronx and her getting turned out somewhere along Southern Boulevard to walk back to the East Side (although with her charmed life she might well have walked back without incident). Scary thing, this kind of insularity that happens with American presidents so they don't even know what's happening and what everyone is thinking, and American pop stars in their own little fantasy worlds-god, the cossetings, the emoluments, the unsparing and unceasing effort not to contradict the SUCCESS, these crazy Howard Hughes worlds of yes men and twenty personal bodyguard-staff -people scurrying about to make sure you never have to soil your hand with opening a door or taking a cap off a pen. I guess you live in that nonsense long enough and you too can be Rosemary Campbell with all the dimension and scope of a touched-up airbrush '30s movie still

And the real truth about his acting is revealed to Gil with another big role, a leading one, but off Broadway, opposite a Reisa Goldbaum:

But, I'm telling you, it's truly difficult to leave the stage. For so long people ask, friends call up: What are you up to? And you tell them I'm mad this week because I'm Hamlet, or I'm drunk and homosexual this week because I'm Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and next month I'll be nobody at all in an evening of Beckett pieces. Then one day you put all those people away, all the masks, all the gestures and reserves of carefully processed emotion, and people ask you what role are you working on this month ... and for once it's your own life, the hardest role of the bunch. You gotta say the lines with a straight face. I was not a great actor. For me acting was pretending I was someone; learn the accent, develop a little shtick, put on the makeup, use every trick I knew and half the time you'd believe I was who I said I was. But you look at a Reisa Goldbaum, someone with a natural gift, and you see that she can reach down into a deep and rich humanity and draw up a true-to-life Williams heroine, a Greek tragic figure, an Ophelia, a Neil Simon one-liner queen. I put on the trappings, she had it in her heart. There was only one role in my heart, only one in my repertoire that could draw upon everything I had, only one I could pull off, in New York or goddam Peoria: myself.

But ultimately, it's the city itself that overpowers Gil:

Emma, you and your poetry, me and my acting-what are we trying to do? We can't top this city. We poor would-be artists can't compete with or improve on the rich density of human experience on any random, average, slow summer night in New York-who are we trying to kid? In the overheard conversation in the elevator, in the five minutes of talk the panhandler gives you before hitting you for the handout, in the brief give-and-take when you are going out and the cleaning lady is coming in-there are the real stories, incredible, heart-breaking and ridiculous, there are the command performances, the Great American Novels but forever unwritten, untoppable, and so beautifully unaware.

Finally, Gil's exits from NY with the realization: Don't get me wrong, there's a lot to be said for the American Dream.  But you wake up from Dreams.  Emma goes her way and so does Lisa (who sells out to marriage much earlier in the novel and is yuppiefied).

As a first novel, it is an admirable piece of work, another "can't be put down" page turner, and in the case of this edition, a real hardcover book (not a Kindle -- one of the reasons I can quote extensively from it with ease to demonstrate Barnhardt's writing).  Plus, as it was originally published in 1989, there are some nice bookmaking features, the deckled edges, headbands and footbands, the three piece binding, but, best of all, endpapers photographed by Jerry Speier and hand-colored by Doris Borowsky.  You can't get this on a Kindle!

A Happy New Year to all.

The Lion in Winter: a "Holiday Show" at Dramaworks

While most South Florida stages are basking in the glow of holiday cheer productions, Dramaworks has chosen to present its antithesis, a play set in the Christmas past of 1183, James Goldman's vision of the Plantagenet family reunion (which actually never happened) in Chinon, France, at the castle of King Henry II, along with his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine who he has briefly released from a prison exile in England, their sons, Richard (the Lionheart), Geoffrey, and John, as well as France's King Philip II, and his half-sister, Princess Alais Capet.

Most of the play circles around alliances made and then broken, focused on which son of Henry's will inherit the throne, who gets what territory, which Prince will marry Princess Alais, or, for that matter whether Henry himself will marry the Princess who is half his age if he can get his marriage to Eleanor annulled by the Pope (who owes him one), whether King Philip can recover territory Henry promised to return when Philip's father was alive, and last but not least, whether Eleanor will be able to secure her freedom from the soul crushing 10 year imprisonment she has endured.  As the foregoing suggests, there are endless combinations for alliances between the characters who desperately want to achieve their objectives with the least important factor being family love and loyalty.  It is the perfect stuff of tragedy, but this is equally balanced with comedic elements -- sublimely and acerbically written by James Goldman.

What a delicious reprieve from the typical Christmas show as behind the facade of the holiday is probably more family strife than anyone cares to admit.  The play has the tone of the cynical Stephen Sondheim song from Follies, "Could I Leave You?" and it is no surprise that Goldman and Sondheim were friends and in fact collaborated on Follies, for which Goldman wrote the book.

Goldman portrays the dysfunctional Plantagenet family using many factual elements but much of it is totally imagined.  They scheme and counter-scheme to the point of exhaustion, mostly out of sheer boredom with their lives, where after a tortuous scene Eleanor hilariously asks, "What family doesn't have its ups and downs?"

The themes are as relevant today as they were in 1183.  Just think of the mass killings, lack of gun control, family shootings and the kaleidoscopic wars in which our species seems to indulge. At one point Richard threatens John with a knife, John saying "A knife -- he's got a knife."  Eleanor's reply to her sons covers war and its microcosm, families: "Of course he has a knife.  He always has a knife.  We all have knives.  It is eleven eighty-three, and we're barbarians.  How clear we make it.  Oh my piglets. we're the origins of war.  Not history's forces nor the times nor justice nor the lack of it nor causes nor religions nor ideas nor kinds of government nor any other thing.  We are the killers; we breed war.  We carry it, like syphilis, inside.  Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten.  For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little?  That's how peace begins.  We have so much to love each other for.  We have such possibilities, my children; we could change the world."

The language is so rich and witty, and if there is love, it is of the contest itself, a wonderfully choreographed Tarantella of never-ending verbal slings and arrows.  Dramaworks takes this splendidly written work and uses all its expertise to bring the play to the level of a Broadway production, one which may not please everyone as it is a complicated, and sometimes disturbing play.  Black humor, perhaps, but there is a certain honesty that prevails. 

Professionalism shines through in the production, first with the most ambitious set ever undertaken by the company (scenic design is by the highly experienced and gifted Michael Amico), a revolving part of the stage where as one scene is being presented to the audience, the other is being set up behind stage.  Goldman's play demands many different scene changes and had Dramaworks not built its mechanized set, the play would have had to be representationally presented or there would have been those dreaded darkened moments while stage hands moved furniture, and this play needs to move along without such interruption.  Amico's set allowed Dramaworks to have a perfect scene ready quickly and appropriately decorated with tapestries and furniture, including one with a Christmas tree.

The costume designs by Brian O’Keefe deserve a special mention as they are so integral to the play and to the characters. O'Keefe not only did his extensive period research, but made a careful study of the characters themselves, designing each costume for that character's persona, and then constructed each piece by hand. Only the belts and boots were purchased.  As a result, both the King and Queen look entirely regal.  Their sons can be easily distinguished by their dress -- Richard the Lionheart in his warlike appearance, Geoffrey the middle son having a tight snake-like fitting attire, and the younger, John, who borders on being a buffoon, dressed in almost a potato sack, all these costumes so suitable to their personalities.  The young Princess Alais is attired in simple gowns while King Philip's attire reflects his youth, although a King in his own right.

As usual, Dramaworks' casting is excellent.  King Henry and Eleanor of Aquitaine are played by two experienced Shakespearean actors, C. David Johnson and Tod Randolph, respectively, and their classical expertise makes their presence truly stately on stage. Theirs is a battle of wits and wills and Johnson and Randolph make excellent foils, yet easily fall into each other's arms, recalling their shared past. Richard is played by Chris Crawford, with the authority expected of an experienced warrior, and with requisite relentless ambition to succeed Henry. A Dramaworks veteran, Cliff Burgess, plays the sly Geoffrey with chameleon-like precision, while Justin Baldwin portrays the clueless, infantile John. Katherine Amadeo inhabits Alais with a calculating innocence, entirely in love with and dedicated to Henry, the man, but, still, as a Princess, knows her own mind, holding herself up well to the dominating intellect of both Henry and Eleanor.  Pierre Tannous makes his Dramaworks debut as an actor, having been active in the theatre company behind the scenes until now -- playing King Philip, balancing his need to appear regal in spite of his young age. 

The production is Directed by William Hayes who is also the Producing Artistic Director of the theatre company.   Lighting design is by Ron Burns, and sound design by Matt Corey.

Eleanor: How, from where we started, did we ever reach this Christmas?  Henry: Step by step.

It's Christmas, 1183 at Dramaworks!  

Music Makes Us

David Byrne made a profound observation in his recently published How Music Works: "We don't make music; it makes us."  So naturally we are partially defined by the music we listen to. For myself, it is the Great American Songbook, music we sometimes refer to as "The Standards," many coming from the theatre and films or just pieces performed by some of our favorite recording artists.

I've made two CDs in the past several years and for the complete list of the songs see the end of this entry on the Great American Songbook.

Since I made those CDs I've taken some piano lessons, pretty much my first block of lessons since grade school years. Those lessons were abruptly brought to an end by my open heart surgery and although I would have liked to resume them, it is a huge commitment of time. Sigh, if I was only younger! Still, the interim lessons have helped my skills, and I decided to test them with a new CD, and selected some more challenging pieces, diverse ones, from "The Songbook." Appropriately, this album is named Music Makes Us.

Some of the songs in this album are close to my heart for mostly idiosyncratic reasons, which I will explain. But first here is the complete list:

My Man's Gone Now, Bess You Is My Woman Now,  I Loves You Porgy (from Porgy and Bess, music by George Gershwin);  The Rainbow Connection (from the Muppet Movie by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher); Never Never Land (from Peter Pan, music by Jule Styne); Alice in Wonderland (from the Disney animated film, music by Sammy Fain); Over the Rainbow (from The Wizard of Oz, music by Harold Arlen); Johanna, Pretty Women (from Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim); No One is Alone (from Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim), Till There Was You (from The Music Man by Meredith Willson); Getting Tall (from Nine by Maury Yeston); Why God Why (from Miss Saigon music by Claude-Michel Schönberg); If We Only Have Love (from Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris by Jacques Brel); It's Love - It's Christmas, Letter to Evan (by Bill Evans); Seems Like Old Times (by Carmen Lombardo); Laura (by David Raksin); Here's to My Lady (by Rube Bloom; lyrics by Johnny Mercer); Two Sleepy People (by Hoagy Carmichael; lyrics by Frank Loesser); What is There to Say (by Vernon Duke and Yip Harburg); I See Your Face Before Me (by Arthur Schwartz; lyrics by Howard Dietz); Time To Say Goodbye (or "Con te partirò" by Francesco Sartori)

The first three are from Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin. There are many other Gershwin pieces I love to play but Porgy and Bess stands alone as a folk opera.  What can one say about such a consummate musical genius other than he was a prodigy who died too early but nonetheless flourished in all musical genres, from popular songs, to Broadway, to opera, to the concert halls.

Then I play four songs that are whimsically fairy-tale focused -- think rainbows and wonderlands.

From there, I move towards Broadway, the first three pieces by the reigning king of the Broadway Musical, Stephen Sondheim, all favorites of mine, two from Sweeney Todd and the breathtakingly haunting No One is Alone from Into the Woods.

A few months ago we saw an inspired revival of The Music Man at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre. I had forgotten that the beautiful ballad Till There Was You was from that show, and I couldn't get it out of my head until I decided to include it here.  We've haven't seen Nine, based on Federico Fellini's film 8½, but I found Getting Tall in my Broadway Fake Book and found myself playing it over and over again.  Very poignant and so included here.  On the other hand, we saw Miss Saigon in London, and thought Why God Why was a show stopper -- certainly as moving as some of Claude-Michel Schönberg's other pieces in his more famous Les Misérables.

That section concludes with If We Only Have Love from Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris which is the first Broadway (actually off Broadway) show that Ann and I saw together when we were first dating -- in 1969. As such, it has special meaning to me. That song is the concluding piece from the revue.

A brief shift, then, to two pieces by Bill Evans, his one and only (to my knowledge) "Christmas piece" -- It's Love - It's Christmas -- and the other a musical "letter" to his only son, Evan, soon after he was born. If I could be reincarnated as a professional pianist, it would be in the Bill Evans mold, but he was truly one of a kind.

Then a group of songs, classic standards, such as Two Sleepy People by Hoagy Carmichael, which is my little hat tip to the late and great Oscar Peterson whose rendition of this song is the best I've ever heard.

Finally, and appropriately, I conclude with the now well known (thanks to Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli) Time to Say Goodbye, which is also the last piece I recorded at my session at Echo Beach Studios in Jupiter, Florida, a recording studio that is mostly frequented by professional musicians -- which brings up the difficulty of the process itself.

I had one three-hour block to get everything recorded, to get it right as best I could.  Three hours to make a 45 plus minute CD. Not only is it imposing, sitting alone in the recording studio before a concert grand piano with microphones all around, with the control room behind a glass in which my technician (the very competent and understanding Ray) is monitoring events, but it is exhausting as well. The fatigue factor took its toll, especially with the longer, more complicated pieces, when I had to flip pages of music quickly while also trying to avoid that sound being recorded.

The other difficult issue is simply being able to translate what I "feel" when playing the pieces and the recording studio is not the most conducive place for that. It becomes a technical performance which if one is a professional, perhaps that is good enough, but for me, I need that feeling factor. It is sort of like having to make love in a public place. Nonetheless, I had established big goals for this CD, worked towards them, and I'm happy I did it, even if those results may not be the same as in the privacy of my living room playing my own piano.

I'm not sure whether I'll do another CD again.  Between my three, I've recorded about 75 songs.  I'm somewhat content with that. The piano has been and will continue to be a big part of my life. I've been lucky enough to have a little talent, and a big love for the Great American Songbook genre, and the time to play for pure enjoyment.  But never say never again!